These two collections include many suttas addressed to Buddhists dealing with the ethical and spiritual concerns of life within the world (as noted by Bhikkhu Bodhi), and thus involves the issues of merit (puñña). In this study I have illustrated the significant but often underestimated position of compassion with merit in early Buddhist doctrine.

Mendicants, a resident mendicant with five qualities shows compassion to the lay people. What five?

… at the time of his final extinguishment. There the Buddha addressed the mendicants…

As he lay dying, the Buddha encouraged his disciples to ask any last questions.

I’d hold his head with my left hand, and take [the stone] out using a hooked finger of my right hand, even if it drew blood.

The leader of the Jains, Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta, gives his disciple Prince Abhaya a dilemma to pose to the Buddha.

We talk about “Right View” and “Wrong View,” but what we actually have, if we really look at our minds, is confusion!

You can use logic and reason and so on in a destructive manner and if you do that too much, of course, you can get what we’re all familiar with: the kind of modern nihilism and cynicism and all of these kinds of things. That comes from too much of that. So, obviously there needs to be a balance. There needs to be some ability to deconstruct, but that needs to go hand-in-hand with a constructive and a positive approach, so that the deconstruction has a context

Intuition is just a natural function of the mind, that’s all. Sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong. […] It’s not the infallible voice of God. It’s just a part of us.

Just as a river is geographically conditioned to flow in a certain direction, [compassionate] efforts are predetermined to move toward success (as sentient beings are endowed with Buddha nature). But just as a river will never dry up, their project will never end.

A lengthy summary of Tan Sitong’s 仁學 (Rénxué), which outlined his eclectic Buddhist defense of non-discriminating compassion’s agency in the unfolding of history, this paper shows how one Chinese philosopher grappled with the challenges of modernity emerging at his time and how his themes continue in the work of Buddhists such as Thich Nhat Hanh.

Besides being a prominent motivation for the delivery of a teaching, compassion regularly features in descriptions of meditation practice in the early discourses

Engaged Buddhism is a contemporary form of Buddhism that engages actively yet nonviolently with the social, economic, political, social [sic], and ecological problems of society. At its best, this engagement is not separate from Buddhist spirituality, but is very much an expression of it.

… we always speak about Buddhism as a religion of compassion, but then I saw the way Buddhism is developing in the US, especially (I have to say) amongst the White, upper-middle class, convert Buddhists… I don’t want to paint an overly-grim picture, but why aren’t there more Buddhist organizations acting to relieve the suffering in the world?

Forget you. This is about waiting

A poem which shakes ‘work’ from its masculine frame and recenters it, not on you, on your brother.